In a couple of days there’s a birthday party for one of my best friends. I said I’d be there. It’s far, half a day on a train.
At this party will also be a group of old friends of my ex and me. I lost them a decade ago by moving away and due to ADD marriage struggle, embarrassment, confusion, and envy. Having grieved immensely the loss of these friends, I also feel they came to dislike me. And I can’t explain I withdrew from them because my ex’s symptoms made him and me both so vulnerable socially, we were ridiculed. Because the confinement of undiagnosed severe ADD made most things impossible for us as a couple, and I could never hope to be understood by others. In fact, it would be inappropriate to mention anything about my ex. Or about general facts of life the last ten years or so. Especially since I don’t trust them. And they socialize with him, apparently, choosing him over me.
They’re mostly couples and they see each other regularly. I’m alone. Divorced and feeble. And they are the only people I know at the party.
I dread this encounter to the point of wanting to stay home on my close friend’s big day.
Please, help me. Should I attend this? Or should I stay home and cry? I was close to these people but none of them has ever reached out to me this last decade to ask how I was. Instead they inquire about me from others. I feel only like food for gossip.
